She looked at him so delightfully, with her eyes full of wonder and interest, that a far stronger man than Ulysses might have lingered to tell her of the splendors of unsailed seas. John Gore discovered himself in Calypso land, with white hands pushing dishes of fruit toward him and proffering Spanish wine.
He was telling her of the grim passage of Cape Horn, and of the savages who lived in those wild parts, when a sudden gleam from his inner consciousness swept across his mind. He remembered how he had told the same tales to that silent, sad-eyed girl whose life had had no glamour of homage in it, and whose tragic face looked out at him from a mist of madness.
He grew silent quite suddenly, bringing his voyages to a clumsy and confused end, and not noticing the questioning look in Hortense’s eyes. He felt instinctively that she was nearer to him than he wished. Her beauty became a sudden glare, clashing with something more spiritual, more mysterious, and more strangely sad. He was glad when some of the gentlemen rose and began to kiss Father Coleman’s hand.
They went down by the same stairway, Hortense herself lighting them with a little Italian lamp. She was very close to John Gore in the passageway. Her dress brushed against him, while the lamp she carried made her beauty seem softly brilliant amid the shadows.
“Good-night, my lord; good-night, Sir John; I hope we have not frightened you very greatly?”
She searched him with her great eyes, so full of intentness for the moment that he felt their power and could not look away.
“You must tell me more of those wild seas, the great rivers, and the Indians, the gold and the pearls.”
He bowed to her a little gauchely, but did not touch her hand, and he had a last glimpse of her standing there with the glow from the lamp upon her face as he went out into the night.
My lord appeared in excellent spirits as they walked home together in the dark. His son had a silent mood upon him, and Stephen Gore found nothing in his silence to be reproved.
“Pearls and gold and strange lands. That is Hortense,” he said, suddenly, as they entered the broad street; “a splendid creature, too—in heart as well as in body.”
John Gore walked on with no sound save the crisp beat of his feet upon the stones.